Hey faggots. So sorry to say, but it's now official: you suck. As in lame, not fellatio. You've gone soft (so to speak). All that trailblazing, waxing and peroxidation has been for naught. All your triumphs (Stonewall, the Village People, keeping Liza's career on life support) are evaporating as you fight for your right to resemble the lumpiest of straights. It seems you'd rather be just marrieds than just Marys. Once bad boys; soon to be bland boys.

Gay culture has entered its classic rock era -- as bloated, indulgent and dull as Genesis, Foreigner or Emerson Lake and Palmer. And adding insult to injury, the young punks poised to loudly and proudly snatch the brass (cock) ring from your slippery, lubed fingers aren't even homos. The next Sex Pistols are guys like me: formerly lame, white breeder boys.

You heard me. Don't look so incredulous. It was inevitable.

Straight is the new gay.

You chose to ignore the evidence, instead debauching and dropping E while Boys Town flamed into the ground. It appears your head is now up your ass (along with God knows what else). The hangover has begun, and it's going to be a real drag.

Straight men have finally realized that liberally borrowing from your subculture provides them with the best of both worlds. All the benefits (fashionista status, interior design savvy, an overall increase in panache) without the sodomy. (And if we want our girlfriend to peg us, that's OK too). You think we ignored you all these years? Nope. We've been talking about you behind your back, while you've been on yours. We quietly sat in the bleachers (occasionally even the Second Cup steps) and took careful notes.

The appropriation during the 1990s was slow but steady (and mostly melodious). In the December 1992 issue of Details (a once gay mag that, ahem, quickly went straight) Brett Anderson of Suede said, "I see myself as a bisexual man who's never had a homosexual experience." A year later Kurt Cobain sang "What else can I say? / Everyone is gay" at the same time that Blur chanted "Girls who are boys / Who like boys to be girls." All the while, Michael Stipe kept us guessing. And let us not forget male nail polish (the Candy Man line includes Gigolo, Superman and Libido) for straights.

As we innovated, you calcified -- once colourful plumage reduced to aesthetic homogeneity, a Halloween costume that's no longer scary. The leather buckles and belts and straps now resemble a straitjacket. Body painted into a corner, your transgressions no longer shock. You've been mainstreamed in sitcoms and national newspapers. It's tough to be taboo when even Pride is now McPride; safe, insulated by corporate sponsorships, awash in logos and endorsed by at least two levels of government.

Meanwhile, after years of bitchy comments, sniggers and snipes, we straight guys have changed our unfabulous ways. Mark Simpson, writing in Salon, coined the term "metrosexuals" to describe our newfound refinement -- the sort of straight, gay or bi chap who really, deeply, madly cares about hair products, sunglasses, and clothing. Others call us strays, or PoMoSexuals or Just Gay Enough. I call us the Nu-Breed, an attempt at reclamation and recovery of the word "breeder." Think we're insulted by your taunting? You poofters will have to do better than that.

We've discovered straight vanity and we love what we see. You sowed for decades, but now we're harvesting the abs, the manicures, the fancy colognes and the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogues. And, at the risk of turning the knife another quarter-turn counterclockwise, we're scoring massive tail with your shtick. In case you somehow missed it, English football genius David Beckham -- the vanguard bloke of Nu-Breeders -- is married to Posh Spice.

Like a cross-dissolve, straights are becoming more gay, and gays are becoming more straight. At this rate, gay will soon mean happy, as the pink triangle morphs into a beige rhombus.

My cynical but accurate friend R.M. Vaughan (poet, author, art critic and bathhouse aficionado) suggests that, "Straight culture has always stolen from gay culture. The only difference is now it's OK to acknowledge the source."

The problem, however, is that like Wal-Mart, Nu-Breeders are category killers. We're the Nu kids on the block, oh so flamboyant in contrast to quiet and polite gay men who desperately seek the approval of church and state. Our actions are making us -- bear with me -- gayer than gay. Having realized the benefits of copping your 'tude, we're basically unstoppable -- mammals darting through the legs of lumbering, soon-to-be extinct dinosaurs.

Do you have any idea how many demographically desirable Nu-Breed dudes like me there are? Granted, you gaylords have more disposable income since you don't have childr--

Whoops. Actually, now you do. Even outre columnist Dan Savage and his partner Terry have adopted. You're doomed.

Everyone from Mark "Metrosexual" Simpson to Dylan Jones (the British GQ editor) agrees that Nu-Breeders have piles of cash to burn on high-end items of appearance-enhancement. We don't want gay antiques -- Barbra, Judy, MGM musicals, much of the pastels -- only the fancy, flashy, pleasant-smelling accoutrements. Nu-Breeders -- not their girlfriends, and most certainly not their mothers -- buy their own underwear. We shop without duress and sometimes for no reason. We own more than one brand of shampoo at any given moment. We select meal-appropriate wines. We wear flared jeans. We know that Dippity Do means Dippity Don't.

I direct any doubters to the July 14, 2002 edition of the Sunday New York Times. There, in the style section (on page one no less), is an article about how straight guys are learning to discern from 35 different kinds of jeans. In another article on the same page, reporter Ruth La Ferla cites a NPD Group report to inform us that, in the otherwise static or declining retail world of menswear, 18 to 24-year-old Nu-Breeders actually increased their spending by 2.5 percent. As La Ferla puts it, "Young men these days share with young women a heightened brand awareness, a tendency to buy on impulse and a predilection for clothes that are simpler, more close-fitting and sexier than in the past."

These numbers will only increase, as thread-count obsessed Nu-Breeders replicate exponentially. And the more often you queers get married or attend Sunday service, the more your normality increases, the easier it will be for us to soak up all the attention. We will shop you right out of existence.

You pansies sold out when you chose the path of the straight and narrow. At best, you now stand in clumps at poorly lit clubs, wearing tight white tank tops, occasionally enlivening matters by donning a tight black tank top. The send-in-the-clones routine is exactly that. Soon, Nu-Breeders will be doing a more passable imitation of gay than the genuine article (Eric McCormack, from Will and Grace, is, in real-life, married to chick and Hal Sparks, the star of Queer as Folk, is also a Nu-Breeder). Straight chic is marching down the catwalk, and no advertiser dares glance elsewhere.

My friend Michael Rowe (a freelance writer and editor of numerous anthologies, including Queer Fear) and screenwriter Ron Oliver lauded our charms five years ago in Fab National. Granted, their article "In Praise of Straight Men," admired the stereotypical, manly-man ("Their 'otherness' is what makes them so attractive"), but Rowe and Oliver asked, "Is there room for straight male chic?" Soon there might be room for nothing else.

And let us not forget the bodybody blow landed in 1999 by freelance writer Bert Archer. In his book The End of Gay, he argues that gay is (or was) an evolutionary phase enroute to something bigger and better in regards to our understanding and experience of sexuality.

So what now? Is the rise of Nu-Breeders your own damn fault? Has the general acceptance of gay culture watered down its raison d'être to the level of light beer? In being everywhere, is gay now nowhere? Is it time to send you and your fudge packing?

I'm not telling you anything new. Sky Gilbert has been bleating like a molested sheep about this very topic for years. In a January 2001 eye column, Sky berates "all the new stodgy, uptight gay conservatives" and how, "Queers didn't get any respect for years, and now some of them have this fantasy that they'll finally get it if they act like the most boring types of straights."

I wouldn't want to be in your $350 square-toed leather shoes right now. Battling the heterosexual usurpation is going to require time, strategy and commitment. The obvious problems have long been identified -- there's an inverse correlation between the increasing conservatism of homos and the liberalization of hets. At the same time, the only way you can shock us now is to act even more like us. It's a Catch-22.

By the way, your desire for marriage is completely baffling. As more and more straight folks opt for the common-law-or-less checkstand, here you are, banging on the chapel door. Geez, we've soooo been there, done that, my friends).

Most straight guys only see the faded, tarnished, wind-weathered facades of institutions like marriage and religion and 3.14159 kids and conclude they ain't worth fixing. Maybe, however, it's your turn to give it a go. Perhaps you can revitalize and gentrify 1950s Squaresville and (somehow) make it cool again.

Billeh Nickerson, author of The Asthmatic Glassblower isn't too worried. "Don't pity the fags," he advises, "We will always sparkle more than straight men." Bruce Smythe of Little Sister's in Vancouver says it's getting hard to tell the difference between gay and straight, but he enjoys the challenge of figuring out who's what.

But Nickerson cautions the Nu-Breed to be careful -- perhaps they're merely being taught how to become better consumers: "Straight men are about to have their anal cherry popped by capitalism." Regardless of orientation, body fascism and paranoia are equal opportunity debilitators.

A few folks, queer or otherwise, have whispered into my ear that this all might be a plot, a gay conspiracy to infiltrate straight culture from within and then repaint the town pink when we least expect it. But based on the successes (and failures) of Svend Robinson I see little evidence to support such a theory.

In their "Praise" article, Rowe and Oliver argue that without straight men to define themselves against, gay culture would have a difficult time indeed (We know we are gay men because we are not them.") But Nu-Breeders are a hybrid, neither as out there as the old gay, nor as dull as the mainstream gays who seem content to make endless circuit loops.

We get the best of both worlds. And it's a fair trade because you're still suckers for "straight acting" gay guys. Now your gay chic has translated into hot and cold running chic(k)s for us.

Don't bother hating us Nu-Breeders, because ultimately, it's a form of self-loathing. We are your brothers and sisters, and some of your best friends are old skool Breeders (like your mom and your dad). As the wise drag queen Christopher Peterson said: "Without you straights, we wouldn't be here. And without us, you wouldn't look good."